Isolation of Autochthonous Consortium for the Bioremediation of Oil Contaminated Produced Water

n this research, we isolated indigenous bacteria capable of remediating oil-contaminated produced water in an efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner. Nine different produced water samples were collected from Omani oil fields and analysed for their physicochemical properties and microbial communities present. Different technologies were performed to extract the DNA of the microbial community cultured in different media. Metagenomic classification of the microbial community showed that the abundant genera are the Acidithiobacillus, Proteinphilum and Marinobacter. The isolated microbes that showed the highest efficiency in oil degradation were further evaluated for liquid-based biodegradation as well as in naturally occurring and artificially contaminated soil. Fourteen bacteria samples were found to be efficient in bioremediating the three environments tested. In the liquid-based media, the isolates were able to degrade the heavy oil carbon chains (C14-C20) by at least 50% after 1 week period, while some of the most potent isolates have achieved more than 95% or completely degraded all the hydrocarbon chains. Similarly, in the naturally contaminated soil, the isolates demonstrated a complete degradation of the lighter carbon molecules from C10-C16 and also achieved a higher than 90% degradation for the heavier components. Likewise, the isolates have exhibited similar biodegradation ability when exposed to an induced contaminated soil where all the lower carbon chains (C12-C17) were mostly degraded by the microbes in the samples.